Gush Emunim

Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful), a right-wing ultranationalist,
religio-political revitalization movement, was formed in March 1974 in
the aftermath of the October 1973 War. The younger generation of NRP
leaders who constituted the party's new religious elite created Gush
Emunim. Official links between Gush Emunim and the Youth Faction of the
National Religious Party were severed following the NRP's participation
in the June 1974 Labor-led coalition government, but close unofficial
links between the two groups continued. Gush Emunim also maintained
links to Tehiya and factions in the Herut wing of Likud.

The major activity of Gush Emunim has been to initiate Jewish
settlements in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. From 1977 to 1984,
Likud permitted the launching of a number of Jewish settlements beyond
the borders of the Green Line. The Likud regime gave Gush Emunim the
active support of government departments, the army, and the WZO, which
recognized it as an official settlement movement and allocated it
considerable funds for settlement activities.

A thirteen-member secretariat has governed Gush Emunim. A special
conference elected nine of the group's secretaries and co-opted the
other four from the leadership ranks of its affiliated organizations.
Four persons have managed the movement's day-to-day affairs: Rabbi Moshe
Levinger, a founder of Gush Emunim and the leader of the Jewish town of
Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, on the West Bank; Hanan Porat, a founder of
the organization and a former Tehiya Knesset member who later rejoined
the NRP; Uri Elitzur, secretary general of Amana, Gush Emunim's
settlement movement; and Yitzhak Armoni, secretary general of Gush
Emunim since September 1988. From 1984 to August 1988, American-born
Daniella Weiss served as Gush Emunim's secretary general.

Amana was Gush Emunim's settlement arm. The Council of Settlements in
Judea and Samaria (Yesha), chaired by Israel Harel, was the political
organization representing the majority of Jewish settlements in the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip. There were more than eighty such settlements,
including those affiliated with nonreligious parties. Yesha dealt
primarily with practical matters, such as the utilization of land and
water, relations with Israeli military authorities and, if necessary,
mobilizing political pressure on the government. Yesha has created
affiliations between Gush Emunim settlements and Labor, the NRP, and
Herut's Betar youth movement. Two factors shape Yesha, a democratically
elected political organization: the right-wing and ultranationalist
views of its members and its political dependency on external bodies
such as government agencies. The group had five councils in Israel
proper and six regional councils in the occupied territories.